Chinese Orange Chicken made with crispy fried chicken covered in an authentic orange sauce. The ultimate Chinese Orange Chicken Recipe which is way better than take-out.
My kids are always begging me to take them to grab Chinese food. They are obsessed with orange chicken but I am never really sure what's in it....especially if they get it from a drive-thru. I wanted to create a version at home, made from scratch, with all-natural ingredients. It still has the same incredible flavor they love. It's definitely a win-win in our home.
It is wintertime in Arizona which means that the citrus is ripe for the picking. I am surrounded by neighbors who have a plethora of fresh oranges and lemons hanging from their trees. This is the perfect time of year to whip up orange and lemon dishes especially this Chinese Orange Chicken.
This Chinese Orange Chicken is made with boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces, dredged, and then fried until golden and crispy. The orange sauce is divine! It is a sweet orange sauce made with orange juice, vinegar, garlic, sugar, soy sauce, ginger, red chili flakes, and orange zest. It is both sweet and spicy and full of flavor.
How to make Chinese Orange Chicken at home:
- Start with boneless skinless chicken breast or thighs. Cut into bite-size pieces. Dredge the chicken in whisked eggs and cornstarch/flour mixture until nice and coated. Get these chicken pieces ready for the oil.
- To make your homemade orange sauce, place orange juice, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, and red chili flakes in a small pot and cook over medium-high heat. Add cornstarch and water and cook until thickened. Stir in orange zest.
- Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. When frying foods, it is so helpful to use a thermometer. Let the oil heat up to 350 degrees. Once the oil is ready, in batches, cook chicken for about 2 minutes until light golden brown. Repeat with remaining chicken.
- Remove from oil and drain on a paper towel-lined plate.
- Toss fried chicken with the sweet orange sauce. Top with grated orange zest and green onions. Serve immediately.
- 4 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts cut into bite-size pieces
- 3 Eggs whisked
- 1/3 cup Cornstarch
- 1/3 cup Flour
- Oil for frying
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- 1 cup Orange Juice
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 2 Tablespoons Rice Vinegar or White Vinegar
- 2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce use tamari for a gluten-free dish
- 1/4 teaspoon Ginger
- 1/4 teaspoon Garlic Powder or 2 garlic cloves, finely diced
- 1/2 teaspoon Red Chili Flakes
- Orange Zest from 1 orange
- 1 Tablespoon Cornstarch
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- Green Onions
- Orange Zest
- To make orange sauce:
- In a medium pot, add orange juice, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and red chili flakes. Heat for 3 minutes.
- In a small bowl, whisk 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch with 2 Tablespoons of water to form a paste. Add to orange sauce and whisk together. Continue to cook for 5 minutes, until the mixture begins to thicken. Once the sauce is thickened, remove from heat and add orange zest.
- To make chicken:
- Place flour and cornstarch in a shallow dish or pie plate. Add a pinch of salt. Stir.
- Whisk eggs in shallow dish.
- Dip chicken pieces in egg mixture and then flour mixture. Place on plate.
- Heat 2 -3 inches of oil in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. Using a thermometer, watch for it to reach 350 degrees.
- Working in batches, cook several chicken pieces at a time. Cook for 2 - 3 minutes, turning often until golden brown. Place chicken on a paper-towel-lined plate. Repeat.
- Toss chicken with orange sauce. You may reserve some of the sauce to place on rice. Serve it with a sprinkling of green onion and orange zest, if so desired.
This Orange Chicken is going to make you forget take-out. Let me know how it turns out by reaching out on instagram at @modern_honey. Have a great night, my friends!
this is the best Orange Chicken I've ever tasted, better than most restaurants. I used fresh squeezed OJ it was delish.
I totally agree I so never order orange chicken anywhere again because this is by far the best!!! Thank you so much!! Haha this saves us so much money!! And so easy!!!!
This is the BEST Orange Chicken ever!!! Fantastic Securite Sauce!!! Can use this recipe with any meat or fish with rice... Mahalo
Made this with precooked Chicken Nuggets last night with rice, Going to try it with Fish Sticks tonight!!! So GOOD!!!
My family loved this recipe. The sauce is really flavorful. I added an extra 1/2 teaspoon graded fresh ginger to the sauce and marinated the chicken in a little orange juice and soy sauce and more ginger for added flavor while I was making the sauce and preparing the rest of the recipe. The only recommendation I would make would be to include how much of the fresh garlic and orange zest in measurement as both of these things can come in a variety of sizes. My garlic was tiny so I used more.
Awesome! I love cheesecake factories chicken and this came out just as good.. can’t believe I made something this good but the recipe was clear concise and easy! Thank you.
I thought this was good, but needed to almost double the amount of cornstarch and flour for breading.
I used a sugar substitute, omitted the pepper flakes and sprinkled sesame seeds on it. It was fantastic!!
Will definitely be making again.
Thank you for sharing.
Can I have the name of the sugar substitute you used. And how much?
This is definitely better than take out and the BEST orange chicken I have had. I can't believe I made something Chinese that tastes so good! My husband loved it too! Excellent and will be a go to when craving Chinese food!
Does anybody know of a way to air fry this rather than deep fry?
The best orange chicken ever!
Does anyone know the nutritional Information??
I usually use myfitnesspal.com or calorieking.com and look up the nutritional of each item by quantity. I enter it all into a spreadsheet. Then I total each nutritional column. That gives me the nutritional value for the entire recipe. I divide each value by the number of servings in order to get the nutritional values per serving. It does take a little minute to do this, but, for me, it is worth the effort. I keep a blank nutritional value spreadsheet and when I create my recipes in my computer I add the nutritional values of the entire recipe and by serving. I have not done that for this recipe and I also made a few adjustments to the sauce. I used sirloin tip instead of chicken. I hope this helps.
I made the orange sauce and served it over Sirloin Tip, cut thin, against the grain with broccoli and a side of my fried brown rice. Definately no more $40 trips to takr-out❣❣❣Very lean, tender, low fat, and high fiber.
How many servings does this recipe make??
Orange Chicken is one of my family’s favorite meals!
Now this is our favorite of all our favorites!!
Thank you so much 😋🥰!!
Two words - Absolutely Fantastic
My husband did not believe I made it myself from scratch! He was looking for "to-go" boxes. So good!
The only thing, 3 eggs was way too much for 4 thighs batch. Maybe I had large eggs.
I was searching for this very recipe today and I wanna thank you for such an amazing and tasty recipe!
FYI, I found a very similar recipe on PreppyKitchen’s site as well. The ingredients are in the exact order as yours but with slight changes to amounts.
This is the best recipe! Even my picky grandchildren ask for more. This is a favorite in our home!
This recipe is now going into the "rotation". It is the best orange chicken I've ever had.
Made this today and it was so delicious. My 7 yr old gave this a up and said it was better than the Chinese restaurant. Recipe was so easy to follow.
This orange sauce is the best I have ever tried. It tastes exactly like a restaurant I used to go to in my hometown. I used red wine vinegar instead because I was out of white vinegar and it was great!! Going to be a staple in my family now!
We love orange chicken in our house. I have all the ingredients for this so I'm making it tonight for Supper. My 2 sons could eat Orange Chicken everyday, so I'm making this for them. I have never had a bad recipe from you my friend so I just have to make this one. Stay cool over there, and we thank you for our dinner tonight.
I just happened to get online and I was looking for a recipe for Orange Chicken, my granddaughters love orange chicken and always want me to buy it, so I decided to make it. Your recipe came up online as the first recipe shown and it had 5 ⭐,I checked out the ingredients and said it sounded good. Well I made it for dinner tonight and it was absolutely delicious. I am definitely keeping this recipe to make in the future and also giving my daughter the recipe so she can make it for the girls. Thank you for having an amazing recipe.
Love this Orange Chicken! My grandkids do too.
Can it be Frozen?
As always, I make recipes which call for sugar with much less sugar than specified. For me, a good 1/3 C of Sugar in the Raw was plenty for this... and, that was for double the ingredients. Yes, this recipe looked good enough to double on my first go. Any more sugar, and the tang of the orange juice would have disappeared, in my opinion.
Best recipe for orange chicken! Thank you for sharing this recipe with us. Will definitely make this again!
This was so delicious according to my daughter! Since I don't eat chicken - I was curious how she would like it - and she LOVED it. I used the sauce over my tofu - and loved the sauce. So, this is a keeper! Thank you for a great recipe.
Great recipe we loved it, thanks!!
Delicious! I will double the sauce next time. My 11 year old said he would rate a 10 on Yelp!
This is amazing I made his for my family and they loved it
The orange chicken was the best we have tried so far. I have to double the sauce next time.
So much better than take out!! Love how the different flavours develop as you eat each mouthful. My husband asks for this at least once a month!!
Best orange chicken I've had in my life. Thank you!
Wow, what a delicious recipe. Love the way the chicken is fried. It is so much better than slopping the pieces around in a web mixture of cornstarch. The sauce was sure delicious too. Very impressive. When I got done my dish looked like your dish. In fact this recipe was the best Chinese recipe I have ever eaten.
The only things I did was add a little salt to tamp down the sweetness and reduce the hot peppers. Will sure be eating this tomorrow too.
So good! I will definitely make this over and over, as it is the best I’ve ever had and was surprisingly easy to make.
Hi. You use fresh or powder ginger??
I loved it. If I double the recipe I don’t double the red pepper flakes. Little too spicy. Had to make it for 50 people so I baked the chicken chunks in the oven at 450 with only flour and salt and pepper. It was also very good. But I do prefer cooking it on the stovetop the suggested way.
It's ok I add more seasoning to it all just to make it a little tastier but it's a good base recipe.
Super good, even my wife who doesn’t like Chinese food enjoyed it.
Question: I used bottled orange juice, is it supposed to be fresh squeezed? I did cut down on the sugar though since the bottled OJ has quite a bit of it in there already.
I too cut down on the sugar since I used bottled OJ. Definitely recommend adding HALF the sugar then add more to your tast.
Probably because the recipe calls for 4 chicken breasts.
Thank you so much for this recipe. I have made it probably 50 times over the past few years (no joke!) It is amazing. I always cheat though and use frozen breaded chicken pieces and just saute them in a pan with a little butter until crispy. The sauce is wonderful. Thank you!!
This was so good! I cheated and only made the sauce and used frozen popcorn chicken for a quick soccer night meal but my kids gobbled it up!! Definitely a keeper!
This was so delicious, easy and quick to make. You can go from start to finish in less than 30 minutes. I used gluten-free flour with the cornstarch and cut the sugar in half so more tangy then sweet. Next time I will add more heat as a personal preference. I substituted chicken thigh meat and used fresh ginger. May make the sauce ahead of time next try so that the flavors have more time to meld. We ate every bite and licked the bowl.
I made this more like a stir fry. I used cooked cubed chicken, and once the sauce started thickening, just stirred it in. I also took some pre-cooked stir fry veggies (leftover from last night's dinner 😏) and stirred those in with the chicken. Let it all cook for a few minutes to make sure it was all heated through, and served over the rice. I'm not a huge fan of hot oil, and I feel like avoiding the frying makes it a little healthier (all things considered) so win-win! 😂
I also didn't have red pepper flakes, so I used like an ⅛t each of paprika and Cayenne pepper (you could definitely use more of each, but not everyone in the house can handle spice very well.)
Either way, it tasted great and everyone loved it!